


Metroid: Smut

by DrkVrtx, InsomniacByChoice



Category: Metroid Series
Genre: BDSM, F/F, F/M, Gen, LGBTQ Themes, Masturbation, Multi, Mutual Masturbation, Other, POV Female Character, POV Original Character, POV Second Person, POV Third Person Limited, Sexual Content, Sexual Inexperience, Smut, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-13
Updated: 2014-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-04 12:21:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1080956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrkVrtx/pseuds/DrkVrtx, https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsomniacByChoice/pseuds/InsomniacByChoice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sex is good, and people should be happy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Samus Aran X

The 10th bell of the day reverberated throughout the makeshift Chozo monastery, and Samus Aran felt saved by it.

"Tomorrow, we will further discuss those pebbles of the path to enlightenment," said the black, giant humanoid bird in the center of the room, ringed by 11 more, slightly smaller Chozo – and one pale Human girl. "Hopefully tomorrow the One Who Was Foretold will be able to share with us some wisdom on the nature of contentment and desire," Full Wing said as Samus rose from the meditative crouch, bringing her head up to the shoulders of her still-seated Clutchmates.

She nodded sheepishly, and fled the stonecraft room with as much haste as appeared dignified and not to be fleeing. As she passed a window, the dim red glow of a dying sun hovered in the corner of her eye and she felt comforted with the reminder that in a million years, they'd all be dead.

In the immediate future, the schedule allotted the next half-hour to cleansing the mind and spirit, reflected symbolically in the ritual bathing the Chozo enjoyed so much. The "doctrine of tripartite purity," and if keeping one's mind and spirit clean weren't hard enough, Chozo considered nudity taboos shallow and barbaric, so the martial exercises designed purely for her left her filthier and more needing of physical cleansing than her fellows.

Samus felt a corner of her mouth tug upward, but suppressed it. Her beaked saviors disapproved of oral expressiveness as "unbecoming" and after four cycles in their protection, she could feel the reflex draining out of her. To her benefit, she supposed.

She did legitimately enjoy the baths, of course. It was the only time she wasn't being questioned, measured or watched. So many classes, special sessions, exercises. Even at night, she had to sleep in the nest with the rest of her Clutch. Even in her powered suit, always someone was in her ear, counseling, chiding, occasionally applauding. But then, there was _another_ reason she enjoyed washing herself.

Reaching the bathing corridor, Samus went to one room modified to fit her scale and got into the tub. The first and last baths of the day were communal, but all the rest left her to herself. She spread her arms and legs to the sides and felt the water flow out to meet her, warm and welcoming as the softest bedsheet. She sighed and let her arms float free on top of the rising water, enjoying the sensation as part of her forearm broke the plane of the water's surface while the rest stayed below. The otherwise imperceptible currents of air cooled as it brushed against her dampened skin while what was fully submerged was surrounded with warmth.

Not for the first time she wondered if her caretakers' disdain of all things mammalian was justified, especially as of late when she had so many more places to keep shorn of wretched fur. The tickle of wind brushing the ends of her surviving fine hairs was like paradise, so perhaps they showed wisdom in limitation as she was able to focus even more on the tactile delight.

She sent her right arm fully below the water to feel her belly, taking pleasure in its unflexed softness while she could truly relax. Her left arm came up to her nipples and the hard muscle of her chest that lately had been growing flabby no matter how much she trained. But her fingers loved her breasts and in turn they loved her fingers, and the sensation, though unequal, was mutually enjoyed. Rising out of the water enough for the cool air to meet her damp chest, she felt the dark mammary circles grow out and stiff, and her breath drew short as each time she traced her fingers over herself, a faint jolt of goodness shot from one point on her flesh to all the rest.

She let the hand below the water go lower, but only teased the part that wanted most for touch as the hand went farther, to her right thigh, and squeezed. She bent her left leg just enough to bring her knee up to the surface and her other hand departed from her chest to stroke the knee and finally in turn its thigh. Under the water, her hands joined at the thighs' mutual termination and began in earnest to call upon the divine wave to crash upon her.

The lusty organ of yen between her legs already had gorged itself on the tantalizing yet felt, and now engorged she could no longer limit herself to teasing; from now on, it would tease her as she ached for the Long Great Moment to arrive.

Samus closed her eyes and continued to rub between her legs with her left hand while her right made amends to other, neglected portions of her body.

Fingers together, she held her right hand directly above her smooth head and let water drip and run down, first this side of her skull, then another, then another. The joy of the unexpected and uncontrollable.

She exhaled deeply and breathing in could swear she was tasting the universe on her lips, its mysteries on her tongue. The Great Masters instructed the Fledglings like herself to use the ritual bathing for meditation and prayer. Well, there was more spirit in her than all of their rituals, in one small moan than all their songs. There was more unity in this moment with herself than peace with all other living things.

But she _was_ alone; thoughts of her mastery over her own pleasure were spoiled once again by the desire that someone else might desire to cause it in her also. Someone whom she couldn't control but might surprise and even control her.

There was another Fledgling, smaller than the rest but still half again taller than herself. Kune was sweet and kind toward her, though like the rest, he hardly seemed to notice except when the Great Masters were pointing out something she'd done wrong or not fully.

But his hands were _soft_. She had felt them on her shoulders once when he'd approached her as she'd stood in the communal bath as the others sat. She'd been looking out a window at a wide expanse, thinking of days gone by and wondering if the present surpassed the past or were all the same. Perhaps her face hadn't been properly impassive, but he had seen her, called her Clutchmate, asked her how she was feeling that day and seemed to have been genuinely interested, though she couldn't bring herself to tell him.

She had seen him labor at one of his "minor works," a prayer book written onto a single feather, a verse on each barb. It had taken him 100 cycles and apparently, he'd made no errors. Kune's fingers were delicate and masterful, sure and strong.

She thought again of the day in the bath when Kune had come up to her but _this_ time in her imagination there was no one but the two of them together and he moved one hand to the nape of her neck and the other spread her legs apart…

She heard herself moan in delight and became worried perhaps it was too loud and someone walking nearby might have heard. Then she began to worry that her worry had distracted her too much and the divine wave would require more supplication than she had time for now.

But no, there it was in her toes, there in her lungs the breath that felt as though she'd been running for an hour, there the heat burning her skin so she marveled that the bath water didn't boil.

And, ah, there it was.

Her head snapped back and her mouth opened – first requiring her to fight not to shout and immediately after, her jaw left agape so she couldn't even force out a whisper. Her fingers didn't dare venture to what was now a rod sparking with electric ecstasy. But she dared them to, and where before she'd almost worn her shoulder out applying force, now the slightest touch felt so intense it almost hurt her with rapture, beautiful agony, little death.

"Samus, are you hurt?"

In the afterglow of it, blood still filling her ears, she was sure no one had actually said anything, and what she'd heard had been no more than delusion. But this was a product of wishful thinking more than anything. She opened her eyes and turned her head to see him rushing toward her.

"Samus?" Old Bird asked her again, now looming three meters over her at her side. "My Egg, are you ill or suffering?"

"I'm—I'm fine, Father," she replied, quickly pulling herself up and out of the water. It seemed inherently stained in some way and once out of the tub, she pressed the command to send away the bath. As she watched the water swirl away all too slowly, she began to consider the possibility that her salvation and subsequent adoption the day her pirates raided her colony had not in fact been a blessing and she might have been better off perishing with her parents and the rest.

And though she tried to turn away the conversation to something else, still her new father pressed on and in desperation she told the half-truth that for her, this was surely the path to enlightenment, or felt so. Always, he had interpreted the prophecy this way, that the salvation she might bring the galaxy was the peace of spiritual unity among all things. He was not in especially significant company in this interpretation.

Understanding the premise of her ruse or perhaps misunderstanding it, Old Bird expressed elation and called for an emergency meeting of the Old Masters. Then Samus was sure she would rather have died than still be alive to endure this.

The Masters questioned her, and she answered as best she could, feeling their disdain for her as keenly as she felt the embarrassment she continued to heap on Old Bird. But they didn't understand really what she did, as shown by their request for her to demonstrate, for their benefit, the technique that had brought her such rapture and understanding.

Samus said she would need the bath, and Long Beak suggested they rejoin with her to her bath. Then she admitted she was still too inexperienced in the method and didn't think she could replicate it for them with them in the same room, huddled around her so; her spiritual mind did not have such resilience yet. They said they understood and would try to think of something, in deference to Old Bird's prior reputation if nothing else. She was allowed to leave while he stayed behind, and she didn't want to imagine the conversation he had with the Masters without her.

The next day, Samus went to her small bath, relieved to see no crowd of elders huddled around it waiting for her as she'd half expected. Praise the Lord of Hope – they would allow her privacy again. The worry that they might try to sneak a glance from around the entry or observe her surreptitiously was quelled by her knowledge of Chozo character. They were brilliant, but they were also austere and blunt and had no interest in deception.

She turned on the water and stepped into it, then sat and stretched out as the warm water rose to cover her. Not today but someday soon she would be able to sing the song of herself again, unmolested.

She tilted back her head, eyes closed, and sighed. Life would be endurable again, rather than just enduring.

She opened her eyes and it took a moment to realize what was hanging above her. Then she closed her eyes and sank deep until she was completely submerged.

Above her, the hologram recorder beeped and waited.


	2. Of Gold

_Episode 2: Of Gold_   
_Set between Episodes 7 and 8 of '[See You Next Mission](../../../820767/chapters/1554760)' co-created with Kefka Floyd._

* * *

The bountiful bouncy busty train of women came looping down the golden spiral staircase, all giggly and coyly dressed for the small, hungry crowd of high-ranking Dead Red gangsters waiting, whooping, for the ladies' exposed but not quite fully naked flesh.

"Look at the titties on that one!" a Human lieutenant observed, elbowing another Red and grinning broadly. The underboss's eyes followed the lieutenant's finger to the olive-skinned, black-haired, blue-eyed lass and smirked before redirecting the arm to another of the choices: freckled, red-haired, of light-complexion — and quite young.

"Ah, there's what you want to take home with you," underboss Noni Graff said. "A little chickling like that will fuck like a champion. You have to know what's what."

Onip Alou, the lieutenant, laughed and wisely agreed with his superior.

"If she's old enough to set the table, she's old enough to come to dinner!" Alou concurred, but didn't give up his case for the virtues of the rare colonial phenotype.

There were eight Dead Red leaders of some importance choosing from among 20 varied representations of the Human and humanoid form. Not all of them had vaginas or even organs resembling vaginas, but then not every Dead Red necessarily wanted pussy. Some of them wanted _everything but_ , and an establishment that could provide everything was a valued business indeed.

At the back of the room, near the doors and not at all approaching or showing interest in the procession of the staircase, was a giant in a red and gold powered exoskeleton, providing security, supposedly, for one of the officers busily lusting on his myriad choices — for these 20 were really just the beginning of what the casino-brothel had to offer.

The contracted bounty hunter did his best to be part of the scenery, but that wasn't in any way possible, and underboss Graff soon stopped his appraisals to include the hunter and try get him out of his shell – as it were.

"Samus Aran! Get up here," Graff said, already long drunk but not so drunk as to forget to be properly generous. "Pick you out one for you. It's gonna be a long night yet and you're to be part of it."

The bounty hunter shifted awkwardly in his suit, then answered in an even, mechanical voice.

"I have been contracted to protect you, Mr. Graff," Samus answered. "And if it's all the same to you, I think I'd do a better job of that in my suit and patrolling this establishment than exploring the contours and naked skin of these… fine ladies."

"It _isn't_ all the same to me, and just because no one has seen you out of your powered suit don't mean you can't let your pecker out a moment to get it wet. That's your job tonight, you hear?" Graff said. "Your contract officially was to be in my service for 48 hours, and this is what I say serves me, _or you get nothing_. So, you get first dibs here, and either you'll pick or I will for you." Graff pulled on Samus' helmet toward him, and Aran complied to bring his head down level for Graff. "Now," the underboss whispered, "if you prefer something less standard or sapien, just let me know and we can go find something better for you in quiet. Eh?"

Samus coughed, or seemed to.

"No. No that's all right." He pointed with the left hand — the other was covered in a forearm-length energy cannon — toward one of the girls midway up the stairs. "That one: the blonde one with green eyes. I'll have her."

With many bashful beats of her eyelashes and several smirking grins, the young woman in question strode the rest of the way down to the floor, only occasionally glancing up and never uncrossing her hands from behind her back. But if her throat seemed to tremble slightly at the sight of the weaponized armor, her ankles never did, despite the high heels, and soon Samus Aran was being pulled by hand toward one of the many ecstasy chambers in the hotel.

Though looking back down the hallway at the remaining pack of Dead Reds for any salvation in restraint, there was only fraternal, bacchanalian encouragement and soon the lithe little thing whose hands could barely wrap around the bounty hunter's thumb had yanked him through the small door and into the sterile white bedded room beyond.

* * *

Dressed only in a sheer silvery negligee with dark maroon undergarments beneath and simple chain gold necklace on top, the young woman released her grasp after getting the armored bounty hunter inside and slunk away from him, never letting her eyes leave his visor or a pouty, bit-lower-lip expression leave her face. The door shut behind, closing them in.

"Ooh, Daddy, the thought of you naked and sweaty under that metal just gets me _so-oh_ hot," she said, slipping off one shoulder strap, then the other as her negligee fell to the floor. She kicked it off of her feet, along with her shoes. "I've never done it with a space hunter before."

"I- listen, you don't need to do any—" Samus started to say, but the woman walked up in front of him and wrapped herself around the leg of his cold metal shell. She held a finger up to the lower part of his helmet, shushing him. "Mmm, I just want you _so bad_." She started to lick his abdomen then stood on her toes until her tongue could reach his chestplate. "God, your armor just gets me so fucking horny. I think I could cum just rubbing against your leg." She proceeded to seem to try; the necklace clinked against the armor.

Samus finally pushed her away, keeping her literally at arm's length, then spoke, although the girl realized he wasn't addressing her.

"Turn the sensors off," Aran said. "All of them. Every viddy, audie and spatial recorder. I want them off, and I want them off now. Yes, you on the eighth floor. Yes, you, the Malakian with the stud in your right ear, with the small tattoo of a woman's name on your belly; you who just ate cephalopod soup for lunch. I mean _you_ , and if _you_ don't do as I say in the next 30 seconds, I will find my way up to you and make you an Ouroboros with your own intestines."

The bounty hunter had been staring at a particular place in the ceiling and now pointed for the last bit. Meanwhile, in the surveillance control room, an earringed Malakian with a discreet tattoo who had indeed had had a bit of squid a few hours before squirmed in his seat as he waited for his superior to arrive and give him the OK to turn off all of the cameras, microphones and scanners in room 3B8.

Meanwhile, Samus was counting down. He stopped at nine.

"There we are. Now, if you would be so kind, please—" he turned to refocus on the woman, "please dress yourself again," he stammered to finish as she now wore only the necklace and a smile. He turned his head away again.

"What's the matter, baby?" she asked, sincerely confused before continuing with a coquettish grin. "Don't tell me I'm showing you something you've never seen before."

"Nothing I haven't seen thousands of times before," Samus said, somehow sounding neither boastful or sarcastic. "I'm just not into …" his left hand's gesture included everything from her thighs to her clavicles, "all _this_."

The blonde girl giggled, and started pulling her panties up.

"Daddy, I don't know _what_ you're into, but as long as it isn't too weird, you've got me for at least the next hour, and sauced as your boss is, you could probably stretch that into four, easy. Especially with the cameras off," she added, re-clasping her bra. "So what's the plan?"

Samus turned back to look at her. "May we start with your name?"

"Daisy," she said sheepishly, digging a toe into the carpet. "Daisy Lee."

"No," the bounty hunter said. "Your real name. That is," he hesitated, "if it's not too personal."

The grin dropped from her face as her nose scrunched on one side, seeming now 10 years older. An edge came to her voice.

"Oooh, so you're one of _those,"_ she said. "Look, I do a lot of kinky stuff, and a lot of shit I'm not proud of, but one thing I do _not_ do is let myself be psychoanalyzed by the kind of freak who wants to get to know me and hear about my problems. So, _no_ , you _don't_ get to know my name, and _no_ you don't get to spend any more time in here. _Scat_."

"What? Please, I apologize. I didn't mean-"

"Just what is _your_ real name, huh? Why are you even here? Just what are you?"

"I'm- I'm sorry. Sorry: that is what I am. Please, I do not want to offend you. I just cannot leave my suit around you. Around anyone," he added, looking as pitiful as a two-and-a-half meter weaponized exoskeleton could. "And, I didn't ask for this, and I know you didn't either, so I apologize for choosing you. I have never enjoyed the pleasures of a cathouse before or wanted to. Still do not. You just looked like- like someone I could talk to. That's all." He seemed to be searching for something else to say. "Please don't make me go back to them," he said.

Her face softened. She sighed and rolled her eyes.

"Fine. You don't have to leave. But, if you want me to tell you my name, come to bed with me, at least. I want to lie down."

Samus looked at her, then at the bed a moment, then back at her.

"I'm not sure, entirely, that the bed will hold me."

"I am sure that neither of us will have to pay for it, so I don't really care. Come on."

She took hold of his cannon, and dragged him again, this time just reassuringly, rather than suggesting fleshy rewards. They got on the bed together; he first then she lying on his left side, and it sagged under the weight but held. She put a pillow on his left shoulder and put her head on it, lying on her side.

"My name is Lena," she whispered, leaning up slightly. The imprint of red lipstick lips appeared on Samus' visor. "Now, tell me about yourself."

* * *

For the first hour, Samus told bounty hunting stories – embarrassing stories, surprising stories, laugh out loud stories of anticlimax and failure. Lena noticed that Samus always skipped over the parts that other bounty hunters and soldiers most embellished.

It wasn't single-handedly wiping out half of a safehouse that Samus cared to relate; Lena had to drag that out of him by numerous clarifications. What he wanted to talk about was how stupid he'd been to go through the front door and have to fight through twice as many people when he could have just jumped up to the third floor.

It wasn't that he saved his boss from being assassinated, first by a sniper and then by a knife; it was that the sniper was a junkie going through withdrawals and couldn't have hit her target if she'd tried, and that the would-be knife-ist had actually tried to stab Samus when he'd stopped the guy. (The knife broke, then Samus broke the man's hand.)

And it was that Samus had once had to chase and catch a cat to earn his bread, or more precisely, Yemen Insta-Noodles.

"I seriously considered enduring starvation at that point, you know," he concluded, he — whose powered suit was superior to all others he met, who could see through walls, see into the brain to see which portions were active when — he not-so-long ago had been unable to afford anything but the cheapest, least palatable of foods. And admitted it.

"You've talked a lot about what you do, but nothing of who you are," Lena said. "I get the impression that was intentional."

"Now who's psychoanalyzing?"

"Fair enough."

"I can't promise to fully reciprocate, but I would like to hear about your life, and how you got to be here."

Lena laughed.

"How I ended up a whore, you mean?"

"In part. I'm more interested in how you got away from home. You are beautiful, clever, and self-assured, and were you my sister I'd be glad to claim you as family. However — and I mean no insult, because you hide it well — I detect… provincialism? In your speech."

"Do you now?"

"Yes. And this makes you even more of a curiosity."

"Aw shucks," she drawled. "I come from a little humid mining planet in the Outer Rim, is all. I'm too embarrassed to say otherwise."

"Why?"

"It's not so terrible a place to be from, but to still be there? And anyone from it is almost always still there. My parents and all my older brothers, all the rest of my family, too."

"Then what made you leave? How did you get away?"

"I don't know." Her fingers played with her gold chain. "Or I guess I do. It was the idea of being trapped there."

"And yet you brought a piece of home with you," Samus observed.

"What?"

"The necklace. It's gold, but that isn't so valuable. And it's plain. If you wanted to adorn yourself with a piece of spectacular jewelry, you could afford better, or better-looking. But instead you have just a chain of gold around your neck, and obviously favor it, in spite of yourself. It's from your home, an heirloom of some sort, isn't it?"

"I don't want to talk about it, Samus."

"I apologize. How did you avoid the trap of home?"

"Well, I always enjoyed sex; probably I started too young. It was fun and dangerous, and no one I knew could keep up with me. But in the back of my mind, it was always there: Get pregnant, get hitched, get stuck. And I didn't want to."

"Yes."

"So I took to hooking; got enough to get off surface and to the orbital platform. I must've been 15, 16. No." Lena's face scrunched with the concentration of attempted recall. "Or maybe that's right. I worked on my own at first, but after a few months, I fell in with some other girls and their pimp. I didn't like it, but I did well enough to move on, go farther. Stayed clean. Mostly. I tried not to stay any place longer than a year. I got picked up for a gangster's birthday some months back, and here I am."

"You could do better than this," Samus said, sounding slightly sad.

"Oh? And be a bounty hunter like you, maybe? Give people the big death instead of the little?"

"I don't kill for the Reds. I told you that."

"Right. You just said you made it easy for your bosses to kill them."

"Not anyone who didn't have it coming to them already."

"Oh!" Lena exclaimed. "Of course. I apologize. The degenerate gamblers and thieves, scourges of the universe. I'm sure they all deserved exactly what they got." This time Samus stayed silent, and Lena went on. "Think what you will about me. I bring this on myself, but at least I make people happy, briefly, not hurt them. Even the ones who don't deserve it. If the worst thing I have to do is stick a cock in an uncomfortable place or swallow something bitter, hey, there's worse sorts of whores. And people."

"Yes," Samus said. "You're right. You're right, but always I have been told to do the right thing, the proper perfect thing, and I had no choice in it. Now I do. And I don't like it, even a little, but for the first time, at least it's my choice. Not what was Chosen for me."

"You have a powered suit and that can see everything and apparently blow up anything," Lena asked. "Why do you let anyone choose anything for you?"

"It was my understanding for the longest time that I had no choice in anything. That fate had decided all for me long ago," Samus said. "The realization otherwise takes some getting used to."

"You chose me on your own didn't you?"

"Yes. But mainly because you looked familiar," Samus said. She wondered if he was joking or really meant it. "I really like your hair," he said, and the conversation died down for a while as his metal fingers deftly twirled it between them. "You'd have made a really good big sister."

Lena laughed. There it was again.

"So, where are you from Samus?" she asked, and was somewhat surprised to get an answer.

"A tiny, dusty, out of the way place. The sort you wouldn't miss. At least, I've yet to meet someone who has."

"Even you?"

He waited a long while, then spoke carefully.

"I am not sure what I remember enough to miss, except that it was home."

"What was it called?"

"I-" He stopped. "You wouldn't have heard of it."

"Ever bother to turn that lie detector on yourself?" Lena sat up slightly. "You know everything about me. Did you want to have a conversation or not?"

"Yes. Here." He turned his left palm down and a green icon on the back of his armored hand glowed then projected an image above them on the bed. "I don't mean to disparage your intelligence, but I imagine your astronomy isn't perfectly comprehensive. Allow me a bit of mystery, if you don't mind."

The emerald image showed the standard Galactic Federation hologram, with the Central Planets and the cathouse's Outer Rim platform labeled. In red, another planet, far on the other side of the Rim, lit up and the image began to zoom quickly to it.

"Wow, that's pretty close to Pirate space," Lena marveled.

Something that could have been a laugh escaped from Samus.

"Indeed."

Coming in on the local solar system, the image turned to true color. When it finally settled on one planet in particular, dirt brown and rust red, a yellow sun was left in view behind it as it rotated.

"For years, _no one_ had any good reason to want to be there. Then one day when I was young, they found some mineral or ore that was valuable, or potentially so. The pirates came and burned everything to the ground." He stopped, remembering something. "That's right, the ore was some sort of fuel, and they set that on fire, too. The smoke from the mines blotted out the sun. And, did I read recently that there are veins still burning underground…? Oh well. They're dreadfully thorough, Space Pirates. But not thorough enough. I got away; I found the stars, and my home."

He stopped, and Lena realized he'd forgotten about her temporarily.

"One day I'll find the Pirates, and I'll burn them all till they have not even ashes to gather or spread. And that will be joy above all things."

A question came to Lena's mind, naturally, although it felt like a non sequitur as she asked it.

"Samus, don't you enjoy sex?"

"Of course," he answered, a bit too quickly. "I just, I think that it's, well, dirty. I do not know how to explain it. It is not desirable. For me."

"Samus, this is my job. This is work. But sex with someone you love is still great. Dirty, sometimes filthy when you're doing it right, but great. Even with just yourself it can be wonderful."

Samus fidgeted.

"You… do _that_?"

"Of course. Why wouldn't I?"

"It's just disgusting. All of that mucus and skin. And then finally you lose complete control of yourself." Lena arched an eyebrow. Apparently Samus noticed because he went on. "It's not dignified. It's not— it isn't _that_ good."

"Dignified," Lena repeated. Now she felt a naughty smile spreading out her lips, and one of her hands unfurled from around Samus' arm to reach next to the bed for a smooth, silver cylinder. She found it.

"What is—" Samus stopped. Lena thought she could hear the suit scanning, thinking. She flicked a button at the base and the tip began to hum with almost imperceptibly swift movement. She slipped her panties down her thighs and knees till they hung loosely around her ankles.

"Oh," he said.

She smiled and breathed hot air on the metal tip.

"It's like you, see?" she whispered, breathlessly, this time unable to help herself. Even so, she thought she saw Samus give a short, subtle nod, and she grinned a split second before hiding it again. Lena took the tip of the rod deep into her mouth till it was slick, then pulled it out again and used it to nudge her bra's cups off each breast. Wet, still faintly cold, her nipples perked up, and she teased the skin around one, then the other.

"Lena, I—"

"Samus," Lena moaned, but playfully. "Oh Samus."

He didn't interrupt again.

She took the humming cylinder and pressed it against Samus' abdomen with the result of a rapid clang of metal on metal.

"That's no good at all," Lena murmured. "Hmm. Where can we find a better place for it?"

Taking it back to herself, she slowly slipped the rod down to her genitals, past the well-groomed patch of hair, past the budding organ that wasn't quite ready to come out, to the folds of skin, already starting to lubricate for the coming lathe. She slid the rod over, up and down on the outside, occasionally coming back to the bud, which increasingly was becoming receptive to the sensation.

For Samus' benefit, more than her own, Lena put the rod inside herself and pushed it in and out, moaning softly somewhat out of habit, but being sure not to produce the insincere sounds she was sure Samus would notice and not appreciate. The rules were different with this one.

After a little while, she took out the cylinder and replaced it with two fingers, rubbing the metal against her bud, now beginning to grow and bloom. In the synchronized rhythm of a pulse, her curled fingers squeezed deep inside her while she rubbed the vibrating rod around her clit, building the pressure of pleasure as it came in waves, stronger and stronger until—

"Ohhh-ooh mmmm," she said, as her thighs squeezed together tightly and her eyes closed tightly, but saw nothing but light. She sighed, and her lungs continued to try to fill themselves with enough air, but never were quite able to. Her fingers continued to brush over herself, but lightly. Chills of desire satisfied shot through the rest of her, and she sighed again, and smiled.

Samus was quiet, but Lena thought she could feel his attention intently on her. She felt his great weight shifting. He removed his arm from under her pillow, and as she opened her eyes, she saw the armored fingers hovering over her eyes.

"May I?" he asked.

" 'May you,' what?"

But already she heard something new humming, and as she turned off her vibrating rod she continued to hear it, until finally she looked closely enough at the fingers to see the blur of them. Her first impulse was to protest, but then she remembered how gentle he'd been twirling her hair using those same fingers.

"OK," she said. "But hold on."

Lena took the pillow out from under her head and pushed on Samus' chest until he was back on his back. She put the pillow on his stomach then got on top of him. She kicked the panties the last way off of her feet.

"Sure you don't want to slip _any_ part of you out of that suit?"

"I am sure," he said.

"Then mind if I warm those fingers up before they get near me?"

"Allow me," Samus said, and she heard the blaster on his arm begin charging, and he put his armored hand near it. "Here," he said, holding his palm out. She touched it, and it felt now as if his exoskeleton were a skin, and he had a fever. She nodded, and he placed his hand on her belly. The fingers began to hum again, and he tested it by placing his thumb on her belly button.

"My hand is on the same frequency as your toy," he explained. "Please tell me if you'd like it faster or slower, but I will do my best to anticipate you."

Before she could respond, the hand got to its business, all five fingers working together and independently, inside and without. Each digit was proportioned for a giant, so only the middle one was filling her, but the rest lay against the labia, gently massaging them open and closed. However, the thumb was the star of the show, and the bud, which had closed again, was quickly opening again.

"Oh my God," Lena said. "Ohhh God." Her body was rocking back and forth, and she felt herself losing her balance forward. Samus sat up slowly and lifted his arm cannon until it was close enough for her to brace herself against it. She smiled, then bit her lower lip and grimaced with delectation.

The humming fingers and thumb were everywhere she needed them to be, in just the right place she needed them to be. As soon as one moved away from where it should have been, it returned and felt even better. And the thumb. Christ, the thumb.

"Right there," Lena said. "Whatever you do, please don't stop."

"I won't," Lena heard Samus say, but there was a subtle change in the voice now.

She was distracted for a moment; Samus sounded a bit like her all of a sudden, but then the sensation between her legs took up the full portion of her mind again, and she could feel the culminating feeling nearby her. She wrapped her arms around the cannon, hugging it.

"You are truly beautiful," Samus said, still sounding quite girlish.

"I—" Lena couldn't remember what she was going to say, because she came, and it slammed into her with greater force than usual, racking her body completely with ecstasy. She squealed and her back arched as every muscle seemed to tense in celebration. The finger inside her continued to vibrate, but the thumb was now just occasionally rubbing her specialized bundle of nerve endings, and even that was almost too much.

"Samus, please!" Lena whispered her plea, but already he'd slipped his hand away from her crotch, grabbing her another pillow to lay on his chest. At the same time, Lena's hands let go of the cannon she'd used to support herself, and she fell on top, with her face just under his helmet.

"Would you like another?" Samus asked, having switched to a teenage girl's voice, apparently.

"I don't think," Lena said, catching her breath, "I could take another one like that." Her legs continued to shake as echoes of the orgasm continued to rush through her body occasionally. "My God, that was amazing. _You're_ amazing."

"Thank you," he said, and she lay on him a while with no sounds but her breathing filling the room.

"Jesus," she said. "I'm soaked in sweat and everything."

"I am definitely going to take a _very_ long bath when I get back to my ship."

Eyes still closed, she traced small circles on Samus' armor with her finger.

"What does your real voice sound like?" Lena asked. "You're using a girl's voice now. Before that, it was a vocoder."

"I am still trying to find that out," Samus answered, lapsing back into the vocoder voice. "I've never been with anyone else like this, Lena."

Lena giggled. "I haven't been with anyone _like this_ before either. But I know what you meant," she added softly. "Next time you visit you'll have to try getting out of your suit and seeing what I feel like for real."

"Maybe," he said.

"You will." She slipped the chain off of her neck. "You've got to learn how to live a little."

When he appeared the next day, Samus' visor still had red lipstick, and a gold chain clung tight, clasped to the armored neck.


	3. Knight in White Satin

It's the walk down the empty hallway you hate the most, the long endless whiteness of walls, the ceiling, the ever-bleached but never quite clean carpet. The identical brown-red doors spaced evenly on down toward a mirror and back toward its twin, and within the twins doors on into forever greenly.

It's during that walk that you have your last chance to turn heel and go back the way you came, or just keep going, leave and never return to put yourself in this sort of situation again.

This is worse even than the moments between when you buzz admission to the morale unit and when the door to the room opens, because then you're in apprehensive dread, but you've made your choice. What God wills you to choose of course happens always, and just as He intends it, but you’ve surrendered to His plan the instant you alert the person in the room you've arrived. Private Dick Karim Abdullahi is here to inspect the unit, they know then. And you don't know what they'll do when they know.

You're at a sanctioned, regularly-inspected morale bureau facility, so you know everything should be in order. Proper dues paid, all proper and improper palms greased, no worries, no frets. There ought to be no danger — except the two-thirds rule, and that's universal, anyhow.

The more serious trouble, more pronounced when making house calls than now, is when it turns out several people are inside, possibly out to rob you, or gangsters looking to make example of you. Letting you know to keep out of the area unless you're willing to pay for protection. At nearly 200 centimeters and 90 kilograms of sinewy muscle, you're more than capable of taking care of yourself. The shocklet you keep in your shoulder pack helps make up for any bad odds you might run into as well, including particle or plasma guns drawn by someone underestimating a pretty “rally boy” like you. But those odds still aren’t good. Worse than two-thirds, anyway.

Attractive, sane, single: pick two.

You're a prize to aspire to: lantern-jawed, walnut-brown eyes, a mane of jet-black hair falling onto your shoulders and — under your trenchcoat — smooth, muscular caramel skin bulging out of the numerous strategically placed gaps in your tight-fitting slacks and sash-shirt. A whole, three-thirds person typically hoped to win a Karim-like prize, or woo it, not buy it outright. Thus sometimes — often — you're lucky to get a one-third. This is unfortunate but normal.

The opportunity for escape passes as your finger connects with the button, applies pressure. You fill your lungs with air and empty them with not quite a sigh, alone before a brown-red door in the white-walled, dinge-carpeted hallway. EXIT signs glow neon hot at all far-aways behind corridors’ bend. They call to you.

The door doesn't open at first. Instead, next to the entrance the viewscreen to the interior comes alive — but dark, as though a hand covered the viddy’s sensors.

“Who is it?” a woman’s voice asks, young but strange in tone, and with an accent you can't quite place.

“I'm responding to a morale complaint in this region, milady,” you say, putting your badge up to the recorder close enough that it makes the whole document clearly visible, but nothing else.

There’s no response through the viddy before it turns off. Soon the door opens, and you see the woman on the other side.

Well, she’s either crazy or cheating on someone, you decide immediately.

Your first impression is that you’re looking at one of the artificially generated ideal forms so popular in off-Network holovids these days: synthetic, unreal. The client is a young woman in her late teens or early 20s, tall and lithe and pale. Long blonde hair up behind her head in a ponytail, she wears a maroon, longsleeved leotard that makes her look something like a ballet dancer, supposing they made ballet dancers out of twisted steel cables. Her only other adornment is a simple gold chain around her neck.

As her green eyes bare into you, you shift the pack on your back uselessly then recover.

“Good evening, my lady fair,” you say, bowing body and head slightly with outstretched hand turned palm upturned to receive her own hand and place a formal kiss on the back of it.

“In,” she says instead, then turns and goes deeper into the room without further ceremony.

Still bowing, your lip curls. Likely, she’s off in some fundamental or emotional way, or just bored from the disappointments of a staid romance. But you’ve been treated worse for less pay than you’re getting now. You straighten, follow her in, and the brown-red door closes behind you.

* * *

This morale unit is simple, but not without amenity. There’s a bedroom, and this is obviously most important, but also a bathroom and a kitchen area. The morale ambassador is expected to be able to provide fantasy, of which domestic intimacy is often one. In this case, though, you aren’t going to be around long enough to serve (or be served) breakfast.

You see her sit at the edge of the bed on top of white satin sheets, looking at nothing in particular so long as the particular isn’t you. She's fingering the gold chain absentmindedly. She's thinking of someone. You recognize the chore this will likely involve.

“You are a delight to all senses, Ms. Bailey,” you purr, setting aside your backpack on a table and hanging your coat on a hook that extends to receive it before disappearing into the wall again. “I’m quite overjoyed to meet you.”

The woman’s face shows no change, but she nods acknowledgment.

“You are... acceptable. I do not regret my expenditure. Now strip,” she says, turning her head back to him. “I wish to appraise your shape. And proportions.”

You cock an eyebrow and smile. Yes, she’s certainly a weird one. But at least she knows what she likes.

Your sashshirt already reveals half of your abdomen, so it comes off first, and you drop it to the floor. You rub the muscles of your upper arms with the opposite hands then run your fingers over the contours of your torso — defined even without flexing and tapered but not to an exaggerated, grotesque extent. She’d have ordered someone else if she wanted that. Your chest and stomach below the navel are modestly hairy, as requested. Below is groomed but still present, also as requested.

You loosen your belt and let your pants fall to your feet, then step out of each leg. But you leave the undergarment, tight enough to seem poured as mold onto your groin, but that little left to the imagination still needs imagination to reveal the last shameful wonderful flesh you have to give. You walk over to her.

“Justine, you should do the honor of the final bit,” you say, smiling confidently.

She looks you in the eye for a moment, green orbs no longer drilling into you, just on you. Their focus is within the hesitation of her own mind. Then she turns her gaze to your belly. Her thin hands drop the necklace and slowly creep under the waistband to begin sliding it off your hips. The top of your thighs reveal themselves along with the base of your work equipment. Another moment of hesitation, then the fabric leaves your thighs completely and exposes your still spongy, but pulsating, growing organ.

“You should see how it feels,” you say, stepping out of the underwear entirely. “Pet him so he knows it’s safe to come out.”

She does so, but almost as if she were stroking an actual animal, an unfamiliar creature of some sort. It takes all of your concentration to keep the erection coming.

“Would you like to taste it?” you ask, but immediately realize it’s a mistake when her face scrunches slightly.

“I- perhaps. Eventually. But I’ll be liking you to bathe yourself first.”

“Would you be joining me in this bathing?” you ask, expecting not. “Otherwise, it seems a terrible waste of the limited time you have me for.”

She seems to consider this.

“No. A shower is fine. But be sure to scrub that,” her finger makes a twirling motion, “before you come back.”

You smile-frown, giving a half bow graciously, then head for the bathroom as instructed. As you wait for the shower to descend and replace the sink, you call back Justine.

“A bit backwards, isn’t it? Doing the cleansing before getting unclean?” She either doesn’t understand the joke or doesn’t care. You hear some clinking, as if bottle against glass, before you step in. “Sure you don’t want to watch?”

A pause. “Yes, I’m sure.”

As the water starts to spray on you from the ceiling and floor simultaneously, you’re tempted to actually perform Ghusl, both to make her wait now and to save time later. But you’re pretty sure it doesn’t work that way.  

All of a sudden, you wonder if you’ll actually be able to _get her there_. Your agency doesn’t guarantee that. Short of chemical inducement, no one really can, and if that’s part of equation, a morale ambassador is redundant. But it’s certainly heavily implied in the marketing, and a considerable disappointment if not. She’s just so awkward. Either God has willed you a crazy complicated girl, or a crazy complicated girl who needs a situation like this to really let herself go and go nuts.

You perform your ablutions without ritual, and the water turns to streams of air, leaving your hair fluffier than you’d like, but whatever. You don’t even bother to re-apply any oils to your skin. This one doesn’t seem to be the type to notice, or care if she did.

Your return to the bedroom to find the client drinking something clear from a black-labeled bottle now three-fourths gone. She pours a bit into a glass and gestures with it toward you.

“It isn’t necessary for me,” you explain. She knocks back what’s in the glass in a gulp. “Nerves?”

She shakes her head.

“Something, something, something,” she mumbles, still not looking at you. “I keep waiting to be impressed and never am.”

You join her on the bed in naked male ridiculousness, but know better than to think on it. You kiss her gently on the shoulder, then again at the base of her neck.

“I’m here to do as much or as little as you like to please you,” you say, genuinely, against her earlobe. “If you want just to talk awhile, we can spend our time doing that.”

“Don’t be stupid,” she says, setting the bottle aside on the tablestand for good. “I paid you to come and take me, not talk to me. So get on with it.”

She lies back on the sheets, eyes closed, and puckers.

This is always the trickiest thing: the kissing. The difference between a morale ambassador and a common whore is said to be that a whore will never mention money or contract, but also would never do more than fuck. A true morale officer — a licensed private dick — by contrast, is a professional, consummate while consummating, and openly so, but a love-maker. That’s somewhat bullshit, sure, but the real truth is whores don’t kiss you on the mouth or let you them. An ambassador’s most important diplomacy is in his or her lips.

So you place your finger on her lips, and she opens her eyes.

“Do you want me?” you ask.

She swallows. “Yes.”

“Then say it.”

“I want you,” she whispers.

“And you shall have me.”

You’re tender. Your hands stroke her face and hair, her body through her leotard and her bare leg skin. You plant kisses on the parts that aren’t straightforwardly erogenous first. Fingers, knees, belly through the fabric. All that sort of stuff to make her yearn for more.

Eventually you’re going to move aside the fabric to actually go the genitals, but it’s the anticipation of that that it’s all about. The first 15 minutes are important to set the tempo of everything, coax out desire, etc., etc.

She’s gorgeous and special, and you really ought to be enjoying it more, but instead your mind is thinking about the other appointments you have this week, and whether you’ll have enough time to go back to your flat to visit Muezza.

Have you been spending enough time with her? You can’t really afford another organic cat, so she has to sate herself interacting with the two artificials you own, and they always seem to be stuck under a counter helplessly when you get back to find them. You wonder if Muezza is doing that to them intentionally, somehow. She's a spiteful one, for certain.

“I don’t want you to do that,” Justine says, hands pushing up on your head as your auto-pilot has taken it between her thighs. She’s on her back, leotard now bunched around her waist. “It feels strange. It’s strange.”

“Have faith, my lady,” you say. “I’m a professional.”

You smile because it’s true; she does not, perhaps for the same reason. This is odd territory to navigate, and while you puzzle over what to do, her hand gropes for then finds your work equipment, unfortunately half flaccid. The rough squeeze she gives for encouragement makes you fight a yelp.

“You should go into me,” she says.

The phrasing is odd, scriptural, and you try not to let that show in your expression. Empty people need filled, you remind yourself.

"As you like, my lady. Of course."

While you work on pulling the bald, wrinkled cyclops up to full stature, you let a licked finger probe its ultimate destination. You take your time with your digit, and know immediately you’ll need to add some extra lubrication, but she’s wincing and still more nervous than she's yet shown.

“Is this…?” you start to ask.

“Fear not,” she says, a resolve returned to her voice. “I will not stain you with maidenhead.”

So you spit into your hand and apply it where it needs to go, but really massage the tiny gland implanted at the base of the shaft, and let the silicon-based gel release to cover the rest. Then you do your best to earn your money for real.

You can't concentrate too intently, otherwise you'll never be able to keep up good rhythm, so you play the usual songs in your head as soundtrack and keep tempo along with them, hips controlling the conductor's wand. Part of your brain keeps on task to track the geometry of what's hidden internal, another to listen for breath and moaning, but most of it puzzles over what next week's holovid episode will bring for the members of the X-Power guild. You'll never grow out of your love of bounty hunters, you decide, rolling your shoulders into her calves with nice, steady rhythm. How nice it would be to meet one in a situation like this.

"Tell me," she moans, almost pained. Her eyes are covered by the crook of her arm over her face. "Tell me that you love me."

It takes a few strokes to register, then you slow and stop completely.

"My lady, I don't think you understand what this is."  You are still taking her pulse and she yours, but her arm is no longer covering her face. Her face is not pained just now.

"I understand that I bought you for a time, and your services promised certain favors," she says. "One of them is to do as you're told while I own you."

"You are very beautiful, and no doubt charming and wonderful on your own time. But love is not bought, certainly not by the hour. There are many sweet nothings I will whisper in your ear, but love is not nothing: it is the only thing."

Her eyes narrow.

"Very well then, boy," she says, voice suddenly much older. "Fuck me like the whore you are. If you're up to it."

You dip your head and shrug. Yes, this is what you get for trying to be a nice guy. You start your rhythm back up, slow at first but building to the thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack of 120 per minute. You don't look at her face because she's looking directly at you, and her face is made of stone. So you focus on the wall behind her.

"I told you to fuck me, whore," she says. "Not make love."

You nod, bend her legs back toward her body, increase rhythm. She remains unimpressed.

"Hit me," she says. You ignore it until she grabs one of your hands and places it on her face. "Hit. Me."

You mutter a prayer and slap her in her left cheek.

"Harder," she says.

You repeat, this time with more force on the right. It stings, like your palm is indeed striking stone.

"Swing like you are actually a man," she says. "Like this."

You don't even see her hand speeding toward your face. By the time you realize what she's doing, there's a thunderclap in your left ear and both your eyes are seeing stars. You don't actually hear her say it, but you manage to see her lips mouth the word: bitch.

You restrain the impulse to hit her back, less out of fear for her safety than knowledge of what it felt like the last times. Instead, you reach your hand under her gold necklace and wrap it around her throat, then put your other hand on top of it. She moves her legs out of the way, letting you lean in and add your weight to the grip. The steel cables dig back into your hands, burning tomorrow's bruises into them, and her eyes start to roll back in her head. You'd be worried you're going to strangle her if, as God lives, you didn't hear her say, "Tighter."

You can essentially count to 10 and finish at any time, partially from practice but mainly from the implants installed in blood, brain, and elsewhere. This would be a good time to start that, you think.

10.

9.

8.

7.

6.

5.

4.

3.

2.

BEEP BEEP.

“Shit,” Justine says, then pries your fingers from her neck with one hand while the other shoves you in the chest, and the next thing you know you’re on the floor on your back. Still, you finish. Like a professional.

She swings over the edge of the bed and grabs a receiving monocle piece off of the chair, then puts it on over her right ear and eye. She mutters to herself a bit, but her attention shifts back to you as you get up off of the floor.

"Oh Karim, I am so sorry,” Justine says. She covers her face in her hands. “I did not mean to get so upset. It's just...”

You head to the bathroom to find a towel, cupping your hand to your stomach to catch anything dripping. You hear footsteps following, but they stop.

“I received a message from work, and it’s very important. You’ll need to be on your way, but,” she says. “if I am through here again, I- I might like to require your services again.”

You return to the main room and find your pack from the floor. You pick out the shocklet and put it on over your hand.

“If there’s a next time, I think I’ll need to wear this for you to fully enjoy it, my lady." It crackles with a charge.

She tilts her head, considering.

You laugh, realizing neither of you were joking. You run your free fingers through your hair and can't hold back the smile.

“Ms. Bailey, with all due respect, if you’re going to be paying for this sort of thing, I think you need to invest in a specialist."


	4. Sword Zero

“Don’t you dare let that necklace fall out of your mouth,” Madam Twine said, her face level with the other woman’s as it jerked forward rhythmically, accompanied by the unmistakable sound of saturnalian revelry, a sweaty slapping of skin against skin.

“Yes, mistress. I won’t, mistress,” the giant blonde gasped, though laboring to keep the gold links in her teeth. She was naked but for the necklace and a multitude of reddening welts all over her flesh.

Twine flicked the riding crop across the woman’s navel to add another. The Amazon  woman inhaled sharply but said nothing, and didn’t take her green eyes away from Twine’s.

It was those eyes that let Twine know the woman was not really present in the moment. And never had been.

Madam Twine took a few steps back, and began to reappraise her subject, her customer, her enigma.

The woman’s wrists were shackled to a cylindrical gray beam. It was about a quarter meter in diameter and two meters long, running atop her shoulders and behind her neck. A cable connected the beam to the high ceiling and usually hung just long enough for the tall woman’s feet to touch the ground if she stretched tippy-toe.

But now it was full of slack as Red the Beast held the blonde’s weight by her hips from behind. His sharpened nails drew blood where they dug in for their grip, and his dark red mane dripped wet with exertion from neck to groin. The woman was large, but the Beast towered over her as well, his 205 centimeter frame launching forward and back, forward and back, forward and back.

Like the woman, he was nude, but then it was difficult to imagine the Beast ever wearing clothes. That was the point of all the modifications, and calling him “Red the Beast” during sessions. He was still getting down the nuances of his act, but acquiring his permanent costume bit by bit made up for a lot.

Twine’s costume was more conventional for her role: a red, one-piece zero suit, covering her entire body like a second skin from fingers and toes up to a high-necked collar. Well, with the expected exceptions for Twine’s loins and breasts which could still feel the breeze of the circulated air. And the leggings, of course, had those ridiculously tall high-heeled boots built into them, but zero suits weren’t really made to be running around in.

Tonight, Twine’s lipstick was black to go with the short sides of her hair, while her eye-films were white to match the top of her tall pompadour.  

Circling around the three of them, a stocky humanoid growled and gripped his lash with the black leather gloves that matched his pants, sleeveless vest, and mask. For now, the mouth hole was still locked closed, so his impatience at not being allowed to be involved was not entirely a performance. The table at the far wall remained cluttered with all manner of clamps, feathers, sharp tools, and lashes. But the woman hadn’t responded well to Blade’s teeth yet. She hadn’t responded to anything yet.

“Enough,” Twine said. Immediately Beast stopped and the room became silent but for the panting. “Let her down.”

Beast retreated himself, and the Amazon was back to standing on her toes. Twine studied her again, not the most peculiar but by far the most enigmatic of her customers.

“I’m sorry, mistress,” the woman said, dutiful as always, despite the discomfort. “Please punish me more, mistress.”

No, she never complained, but she’d also never called out the safe word to terminate or pause the session, and to some extent that meant she hadn’t ever felt out of control or been pushed to feel her limits. Twine normally considered such a thing a sign of her professionalism and sensitivity to a client’s needs. But this wasn’t a normal creature with her now.

The first time the young woman had come in, she’d had difficulty describing exactly what she was looking for.

“I want to feel helpless,” the woman had said at her first consultation. She all blonde and pale and gorgeous, but frighteningly large and powerful without being grotesque. The terminology and equipment had seemed totally foreign to the woman, who called herself Samantha Aaron as obvious pseudonym. “I want to be made hopeless, and terrified. And I have been told you are a specialist in all of these things.”

“Specialist” implied there was a science to it, and there was. An art, too. But Twine didn’t understand her canvass any more than she understood the unifying equation. Well, either way, tonight they’d find Samantha’s limit, Twine resolved.

Twine turned to the room entryway. “Beast, Blade: come with me, and get the lights on your way out.” Twine turned back. “You don’t let go that necklace.”

“Yes, mistress.”

Then the lights went out and three of them left the woman alone in darkness.

She’d been coming in for several months now, usually two or three sessions close to another, then nothing for weeks. A traveler’s schedule. She always paid promptly, in full and directly in physical Fisk cards loaded with credit rather than from an electronic account.

In these business dealings, Miss Aaron was confident, imposing even. Twine had sat in on only one but was sure to watch recordings of them all to better get a measure of the woman. Samantha  never laughed and could only manage a rare ersatz smile and not always at the appropriate time. No one, not even Twine, enjoyed looking into the emerald eyes of the young woman in her original mode, no matter how supposedly pleasant or informal the conversation.

Then once the game began, Samantha was meek to the point of extravagance. Her gaze dropped or darted to avoid any direct contact, her lips trembled, limbs shook. She seemed to revert almost to child’s sensitivity, but her body was durable beyond measure. She was  playing a game, and in too much control to ever bother appealing to the rules to save her.

Outside the room, the Beast and the Blade fell in a step behind as Twine led them wherever they were going.

Erotic advertisements for the services offered at Twine’s bacchanal emporium and for other related products flashed along the walls and holographically above the railings of the central staircase, winding 70 floors to the bottom. The top six floors all belonged to Twine, but only the top two were devoted to rooms like the one they’d just come from, so hugely decadent and singularly intentioned. She was a specialist, and only 13 rooms could ever be used simultaneously. Really, 10 when you factored in the time for cleaning. The scarcity was part of the appeal.

It couldn’t be all work and no play, especially in this industry full of working women and men. So one of the rooms below was kept as a changing room, and up here, behind the heavy locks and SPECIAL PERSONNEL ONLY lettering lay Twine’s respite for sanity. When they reached it, she entered the seven-digit code, letting it prick her finger and draw a drop of blood with the final number. The heavy reinforced carbon nanofiber beams uncrossed, the door opened, and she gestured her two associates in before her, then followed them. The door closed and locked behind.

They’d already plopped into two couches opposite one another, but Twine remained standing as she put on a rubbery knee-length coat, activated a stimulant vaporizer, and mixed herself an ethanol infused drink from the the mini-bar.

“Well, gentlemen: ideas?” she said, pouring some gin to go with a splash of ananas juice.

The Blade took off his mask and blinked a few times as he ran his fingers through the wet brown mop of hair on his head. The mask had corrective lenses in them, but his spectacles were in a locker three floors below. When he squinted, as now, he looked every bit the 38-year-old husband and father of two he was. But as he spoke, his voice was still the Blade’s.

“We haven’t pushed her enough, made her feel real danger. So of course she’s still playing pretend,” he growled. “Isn’t that what this is about?”

“So your suggestion is we should break her fingers till she runs out and start on her toes?” Twine said.

“Wouldn’t be the worst idea.”

“It wouldn’t be the worst idea you’ve had, Ellis, no,” Twine said.

He glowered a moment, then shrugged.

“And you Marko?” Twine said.

On his couch, Red the Beast picked at a frayed piece of cloth near his hand.

“We should be more imaginative, maybe,” the Beast mumbled, partially as a result of his fanged underbite but mostly of his disposition. Three years ago, he’d been short of 175 centimeters tall and less intimidating than the younger of Ellis’ two children. But even today, there was a reason she didn’t let him actually talk around clients.

“And what does your ‘imagination’ tell you would be effective?”

Marko fumbled at one of the subdermal implants in his forearm.

“I don’t know exactly, really,” he said. “But maybe she’s not good at fantasy. Or something. So she pretends without feeling it. Or whatever.”

“She’s pretending before she ever gets to us and puts on that frightened girl routine.” Ellis asked. “ ‘Samantha Aaron.’ My ass. Everyone who comes here is hiding something. Our job is to peel back what she presents to us and get at what she really is and is feeling.”

Twine smiled.

“She’s beyond peeling, I wager. You’ve yet to give her a thrashing deep enough to outdo the pale ones she came in with,” Twine said, reminding him of her scars. “Those aren’t from rough play.”

“So? This is what she’s asking for, then. A chance to re-live something, work through it.”

“Everything feels like true love, till you have it,” Twine said. “Then nothing does again. It’s the same with pain.”

Looking every bit the Blade, Ellis showed his teeth. “I can make her love again.”

She waved him off, rolling her eyes, and went back into to her drink.

Twine pointed at Ellis suddenly. “You were on the right track, I think, but what Marko was saying. She’s not good at fantasy, so we’ve got to make it easy for her. Like you said, obviously, she’s lying. Obviously, she’s pretending to be someone she’s not, just not very well. So who is she really? And what does she have to hide from us?”

Twine left the statement hanging. Ellis took a moment, then he saw it too and stood up.

“And wouldn’t we like to find out just what?” Ellis said, clapping his hands.

On the other side of the room, the excitement wasn’t shared. The Beast remained seated.

“But why would we care?” Marko said. “She pays well and on time. Doesn’t she?”

“So we don’t want to know for ourselves,” Ellis said quickly. “Because we don’t know why it’s worth anything. But someone does.”

Twine cackled. “Yes! And it doesn’t matter who she thinks it is, as long as she thinks it’s her deepest, darkest, most precious thing we want to get. Maybe some part of her will realize it’s still part of the game, but the doubt will be real, not pretend. And that’s all we need to grow into something genuine.”

Twine set down her drink and gestured to both of them. The Blade picked up his mask, and Red the Beast grudgingly got out of his comfortable seat to come over to her. She ran her fingers through the hair of the napes of their necks and brought their heads down close to hers.

“My beautiful boys,” Twine said, kissing each forehead in turn before they pulled away, embarrassed. “Now let’s go break this bitch in half.”

* * *

“I’m sick of you, you filthy whore,” Twine said, holding a rather dull knife against the woman’s throat. “You aren’t worth the money or the time or the frustration.”

Twine backed off and dropped the knife into one her coat’s thick pockets to empty her hands. She walked to a table at the periphery of the woman’s vision and picked up a pair of pliers, a novelty shocklet, and a leather strap cut at the end to make five short flails. She took them and placed them one by one in front of the woman on the floor just a couple of meters from her dangling feet.

The girl’s head drooped.

“Yes, mistress. I’m sorry, mistress,” the blonde doted.

“Shut up. I’m not your ‘mistress.’ You never could manage to say that word without sneering it, could you? Don’t answer. Don’t ‘yes mistress’ me. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that a -- well you could say a mutual friend of ours has let us in on a little secret. You’re not who you say you are. And you know something very valuable that our friend would like to know. So you’re going to tell us.”

The woman hesitated.

“Yes m-”

Twine slapped her across the face. Hard. The Amazon’s cheek burned red, but Twine’s hand felt like it had smacked concrete. Twine didn’t let on about her hand, but for a moment the blonde’s eyes went true: first alive with fire and then empty, which was worse. But that dropped back into the weak mask, and the necklace never came out of her teeth.

“I’m sorry, mistress.”

Twine didn’t think it was worth hitting her again.

“But first my two ogres are going to have their way with you, and I know you’re a wretched bundle of daddy issues, but if you cum from this, I swear by the Strong Force and the Weak, I’ll hurt you worse than the ones who left those ugly old marks on your back.” Twine grabbed her under the chin and locked eyes with her. “Is that understood?”

The girl’s eyes had never left Twine’s but now they were half-hidden under her brow.

“Yes. Thank you-” Something wet struck her in the forehead.

Twine had just finished clearing her throat and now the phlegm was dripping down between those half-hidden eyes of the Amazon. Again the woman’s response was muted. Twine walked behind the client again as Blade and Beast approached from the front. Her palm still stung from the slap, and on her way back around to the front of the woman, she clenched and unclenched a fist behind her thigh. If they were lucky, maybe they’d even find out what Samantha Aaron actually was by the end of all of this, Twine thought, considering her hand.

Causality heard her thought and mocked Twine almost immediately. The platform lights went out, the room turned red for several moments before the in-house generators kicked on.

Almost as quickly, the silence was replaced by a siren and automated voice.

WARNING: AUTHORIZED BREACH OF LOWER LEVELS INITIATED

This fantasy was no longer worth pursuing, Twine decided. She fingered the small gauge in her earlobe and hailed the lobby. They seemed preoccupied, but she sent the query anyway.

“We aren’t due for a vice raid for another three weeks, are we?” Twine asked her front desk.

She waited another 10 seconds, then stopped expecting to hear anything.

“Marko, let the girl down. Ellis, get naked,” Twine said. Neither moved. “Do as I say!” she shouted.

Red the Beast hurried up to Samantha and began to stretch for the clasp so high up he was the only one who could reach it without a stepladder. Many subtle touches like this were helpful in building the illusion, but the illusion was suddenly no longer helpful.

“Is Vice here?” Ellis said, shedding the Blade’s vest and pants onto the floor in a pile beneath his feet. “I thought they weren’t surprising us till the 13th.”

“Looks like they’re surprising us tonight, proper. Throw your clothes under the table then get under Miss Aaron to put her legs around your shoulders, dinnertime style. Mask, too.”

“I don’t savvy, but I do,” Ellis said, pitching the clothes under the table. He took his mask off, blinking, and gave it an underhanded toss toward the rest of the clothes. It landed close.

“Marko!” Twine barked. “It’s things like this I remind you to do your finger exercises for. What’s going on?”

“I’m just, I’m nervous. The Vice haven’t ever seen me because you’ve always hid me away, and I- I-” His hands were almost spasmodic now, and the cable itself fell from between his fingers. The clamp was still screwed closed.

“By Ea-Em, just stay away from the door, look harmless, and do your best to be yourself. With any luck they won’t care anything of seeing you.”

Twine looked around the room for the ladder to let the woman down herself. It was in the far corner with the other rummage, she thought, but couldn’t see it. All floor-by-floor integrity had been out since the first power outage, so she had no idea how much time she had.

“On second thought Marko, come back, and give me a boost up, so I can do it,” Twine said. He stepped up and she put her heel into his cupped hands. He squealed as it dug in, but didn’t let her go. Standing above the Amazon now, the woman glanced up at what Twine was doing and an eyebrow ticked up inquisitively, but then she looked down away again.

“Come on,” Twine muttered to herself as her fingers spun, as if that would hurry the work. It didn’t, but she got far enough along that hope rose precipitously in her stomach, just enough to feel the kick of disappointment when the door was forced open.

Three Human males sauntered in through the entrance but still fanned out carefully. They weren’t especially large for their sex or species, but they didn’t have to be. The forearm-mounted weapon each had poking out from one sleeve wasn’t especially large, either, but neither did those have to be. Two nerve cables ran from the weapon’s targeting center to the occipital lobe of their brain: one external and detachable, one internal and permanent. Both were connected now. Along with the partial body armor visible at the groin, thighs, and neck, the Vice Squad was proving it was interested in far more than a routine cathouse inspection.

“Lieutenant Connor!” Twine called excitedly. “If I’d known you were looking for something special tonight, I’d have cleared out the whole floor just for you.”

The man with close-cropped black hair and matching five o’clock shadow pointed his weapon at Twine then gestured.

“Down, whore-mistress,” Connor said, mirthless. Unlike the other two, he had a tactical monocle on over one eye, dotted with neon geometric shapes. The other socket remained uncovered except for an always half-closed eyelid, but the orb beneath jerked about, never settling on anything in the room.

“Then,” he continued, taking notice of one of the blinking shapes, “toss that knife in your pocket this way, slowly, and move away from the pervert pussy. Your dog better not move at all unless we say, and then he’d better move quick.”

“Absolutely, darling,” Twine said, giggling as she climbed down. “He and I were just having a little rough, consensual fun with our two friends here when you gentlemen arrived.”

“I don’t know who this pretty thing is hanging,” Connor said, exposed-eye dancing, “and I don’t care. But I know your leather boy. Elbows and knees, gimp: crawl on the floor over there and keep your hands on your head.”

“And keep your cheeks squeezed tight unless you mean it as an invitation,” the younger of the two other Vice officers whispered hoarsely, from the left of his lieutenant. His cheeks were freshly shaved or still not sprouting, but his smile only pulled his mouth to one side, twisting the face more than forming a grin.

The other officer, dark haired but with a thick beard streaked with gray, chuckled loudly as he picked up a double-ended device from the table to their right and wiggled it.

“Don’t threaten him with a good time. Haw a-haw a-haw.”

Ellis gave a worried glanced toward Twine. She responded with a bubbly laugh. “Of course we will, of course we will.” She carefully pulled out the dull knife to toss to the floor. Ellis got down on his stomach to move awkwardly toward an empty space on the floor, hands on his head.

“What’s all this about Paul?” Twine said, pouting as she approached. “Really.”

Lieutenant Paul Connor shook his head. She stayed a few paces back.

“Now for your furry friend, too. He’s going to face away from us, get face down and put his hands on his head. Or we’re going to do the universe a favor and send this abomination out of it.”

Twisting the pout into a smile, Twine nodded to Marko, but he didn’t move except to quake.

“Of course, absolutely,” she said. “But first, please let him get our client down so she can get out of your hair, and we can talk about what you need from us today.”

“It’s not that kind of day,” the young vice officer croaked. He lifted his arm toward Marko and fired. The blast struck his abdomen, and Red the Beast fell onto his back then started to cry.

Ellis jerked up to his knees, but a shot whizzed by his head into the wall.

“Stay down, gimp,” Connor said. “We’d hate to have to think you were resisting detention, as well. Better thumbcuff him, sergeant.”

The graybeard officer laughed and went to do it. Ellis stayed down, saying nothing as the electrobinds were slipped onto him and drew taut behind his back. Marko was still bawling softly, and the young Vice officer seemed drawn toward him, grinning on one side.

Twine’s expression dropped its pleasantries.

“Don’t,” she barked at the young officer. “Leave him be. Paul: tell your goon to leave him be. Let me get my man somewhere to fix him up before it’s too late. We can work out how much I owe you afterward.”

Lieutenant Connor shook his head. “Nope. We could look the other way before, but not when you’re going after one of the board of directors. No amount of money puts that right that on this fief.”

Twine’s mouth stretched flat and tight.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You know me. I’ve always played square, paid on time and in full. And I never give you cause to meddle. This is some misunderstanding. But we can work everything out and put it right if you let my two men go get taken care of, and take my client with them, out of all this. You can keep me here, and I’ll be at your mercy. All of your mercies,” Twine added, with a new texture to her voice.

“You think because you fuck people for a living you can fuck your way out of anything,” Connor spat. “What happened, and what we’re going to tell everyone at the inquiry, is that we got an anonymous tip and stumbled on a horrible sex dungeon up here. And you and your boys resisted arrest after we caught you extorting and in the middle of raping to death some pretty young woman from out of town.”

“Haw a-haw a-haw.”

“And probably the most shocking thing, you know,” Connor continued, “is that your gene-therapy abomination tried to hold you hostage in order to escape after we caught you all. But he got anxious and cut your throat, so we had to kill him. And the only witness we have is your gimp, who’s going to back up everything we say unless he wants that wife and kids to have a truly terrible run of misfortune.”  

The older officer kicked Ellis in the ribs, who took it in silence. A second kick followed, and this time Ellis took the hint and groaned.

Twine said nothing. The blond young officer had picked up the discarded knife with some cloth from his pocket and placed it temporarily in Marko’s trembling fingers before withdrawing it again and dropping it nearby on the floor.

“Your story doesn’t make sense. The knife is for play. It’s not sharp enough for that tale,” Twine said, calm as reason and facts ought to be.

“If you push hard enough, it doesn’t matter how sharp a thing is,” Connor said. “Your pet is a strong lad. Not that the inquest will get that far.”

“Sounds like you have everything sewn up then, don’t you?” Twine said.

“Almost everything,” the young officer whispered, approaching the Amazon. “There’s still that raping to death end to tie it all together.”

The young blond officer unsnapped the front of his groin armor. It hung loose and provocatively at his inner thigh.

“Of course,” his hand stroked the girl’s face, “depending on how you agree to tell about what happened here, doll, it might change at what point we were able to rescue you,” he said. “Right Lieutenant?”

“That’s right.”

“Haw a-haw a-haw.”

The girl whimpered.

Connor looked at Twine, disapprovingly. “What’s she complaining about? We aren’t even going to charge her anything to give her this nice thrill.”

“-Sword Zero!” the girl gasped. Her head hung low and hair shielded her face but her whole body was shaking.

“What did you just say?”

“Narpas Sword Zero,” she said again, now sobbing, but directing her words toward Twine.

Twine frowned sadly.

“I’m sorry, sweetie. It’s much too late for that to make anything safe.”

Twine saw the girl’s eyes glisten with tears as they searched out her face. The Vice officers were puzzled but enjoyed watching the interaction play out.

“So you really can’t call this off, Mistress?”

Twine shook her head, no.

“Oh,” the girl said. She blinked. The necklace chains fell from her mouth and clinked softly onto her sternum.“Oh,” she repeated, this time with a sigh as her mien seemed replaced by another person entirely. “I was afraid of that." 

Her gaze found the lieutenant. 

"What unfortunate timing you fellows have.”

* * *

“Twine,” she said, “I know you claimed earlier this beam on my back was made of unbreakable reinforced carbon nanofibers, but it just feels like titanium.”

One smooth cheek of the young officer bunched up as he unzipped his pants in front of Samantha Aaron.

“The only thing that’s going to break is your hips when we’re done splitting you open,” he croaked.

Samantha looked down at his intended weapon.

“Oh no. It’s so big. How will I ever fit such a monster cock inside my teeny-tiny tight pussy,” she monotoned. Her attention switched back to Twine. “Hello: this is important.”

“Titanium, yes. The shackles and cable are nanofibers,” Twine said quietly. Then added, “But the clasp is steel.”

The woman said nothing at first. Her face showed nothing, either, but her eyes were alive with energy.   

“Delightful.” She turned her gaze up toward the ceiling. “Delightful.”

Aaron bent to the side, making the beam almost parallel with the cable, then wrapped the cable around the cylinder once, twice, a third time, in her left hand.

“In a moment,” Samantha said, getting a look at everyone as she slowly twirled around the room, “you’re all going to feel very stupid for interrupting me.” Twine heard something creaking but couldn’t tell from where. “But that feeling won’t last very long.”

Suddenly Twine recognized the sound's origin and looked up just in time to see the deformed clamp snap open. The Vice men realized it a moment later and each looked up to see it just as the naked girl dropped to the floor in a crouch. The young officer looked down and caught the right end of the beam under what had been his perineum.

As he fell back in gaspy soundlessness, the other two leveled their weapons where she’d been, but already Aaron was moving, rushing at the graybeard, farthest from Twine, and she slipped past him. He spun around but she moved with him, back to back.

“Get out of the way, Syed,” the lieutenant shouted next to Twine.

“I’m trying,” the older officer said.

The woman stepped away, spinning the beam like a gyrocopter blade, but it was her foot that caught graybearded Syed in his stomach, and he fell to the floor with the limp emptiness of man unencumbered by conscious troubles. Then there was a crackling pop like an explosion and Twine saw Aaron now had the beam split into two pieces but still connected at her wrists.

“What the fuck are you?” the lieutenant blurted, and his shoulders sagged slightly before self-preservation buoyed them again, and he began to fire at her. The woman held her arms up in front of her face, and blasts soaked with molten warmth into the pieces of the beam covering her forearms. As the Vice officer finally reacted to alter his aim, she’d already crossed the distance of the room and leapt toward him. The last thing he saw was a bright neon circle tracking the flat end of a cylinder coming rapidly forward just before it, the monocle, and his face were shoved out the back of his head.

Twine looked at Aaron, gold chain rising and falling upon the heaving chest, and saw the rippling muscles in her shoulders still spasming with exertion. Blood partially dissolved by sweat ran down her back and legs from where the beam had cut her as it broke, but otherwise she appeared unharmed. She exhaled and turned the deadly green eyes on Twine.

“What are you?” Twine said, the dead man’s question echoing from her mouth.

“That was a question they really should have gotten answered before they came in here, don’t you think?” A weird joy radiated from the client now, and there was no trace of the girlish meekness anywhere. “I’ll be liking you to put your key to these cuffs now.”

Twine went to the table, came back, and did as told. Rubbing her wrists, the woman then bent forward to eye level with Twine and studied her seriously.

“There will be plenty of time for some explanations later,” the Amazon said. “But right now, I need one from you: that little trick you tried to play on me, spitting on my face and the like. Is there actually someone who paid you to find something out about me? Quickly now, and believe when I say it will be worse for you to lie here and me find out later.”

“No. It was just a game we came up with for you. Nothing more.”

The woman said nothing but continued to look at her, the way Twine had seen hawks regard mice before descending. She did her best not to gulp.

Suddenly the naked giant smiled. It was big and beaming and genuine. It was new.

“And a fine game it was, until these all ruined it.”

Aaron reached for Twine, and pulled the madam against her slick body, arms strong enough to compel it but without needing to. Their kiss was short, fierce, and Twine would spend many later nights thinking about it.

In the moment, Aaron cut it off and stood up to resurvey the room in its gory aftermath. She seemed to take special notice of the equipment on the floor and still on the table. “We need to get out of here, get your men taken care of, and get you somewhere safe to stay a while. I have a friend I can call who'll help with everything once we get to ground level.

"But first," Samantha Aaron said, looking herself up and down, "I’ll be liking to borrow that coat."


	5. Echoes

I arrive first, as always.

It will be no more than a minute or so before the next of us will be here. It will be an hour until the last comes. Everything will happen quickly after that.

For now, I am alone. I wait. Nothing in my starship moves. I sit on a bare white floor in the meditation pose I was taught as a fledgling. I do not pray. I have all of the serenity and silence in the universe. There are no distractions here. I am complete.

My starship's viewscreen shows a planet as it was long ago. Or not so long ago. For now, from this distance, the past is just arriving. It does not realize it is past.

These are that sorry little Human colony’s last happy moments. This is the last hour they have to worry about everything that seems so terribly important and will not matter at all ever again. The miner knowing he ought ask the doctor about that lingering cough but putting it off because he fears the worst. The wife wondering if she heard her husband whisper another woman’s name the night before. The debtor looking at hectares, deciding how many and which to sell to the bank. The mother scolding her daughter for the new stains that will never come out fully from her new dress.

My own mother is cooking. She is trying a new recipe. She hopes it will come out all right. This is her worry.

No one is going to taste that meal. No one ever does.

In my viewscreen, the colony Kal'on – Linud Lünder waits, consumed with everything trivial. In my ship, I wait and watch and try to remember as much as possible. I try to remember something new. Especially the trivial.

Another starship arrives, it one-light-year closer to the planet than I.

It is my ship. It is me inside it, sitting on the bare white floor. I am one year younger. I am alone.

* * *

_She is dancing. She is amazing when she is dancing. She is always amazing. It is only especially so when dancing. But that I do not know yet._

_I have never seen her at this club before. I would have remembered._

_I come here to be left alone, to be surrounded by noise and crowd and solitude. I recite no sutras. I study no texts. But I have found my pebbles of enlightenment. They clink in my glass until they melt and become one with me._

_I am drunk. I have just finished a contract that was more unpleasant than usual. I am not drinking to forget, however. Nothing about the contract or what I had to do for it bothers me or made me feel unpleasant in any way. I am drinking because I know it should have. I am drinking to remember why._

_This is a Galactic Federation stationary platform. It is outside of the Central Planets and therefore quasi-public. But it is still under direct federal administration. It is too important to be a franchise. All of the people here look like Centrics. So will everyone outside. They came to study at the military and political academies, or to visit their friends doing so, or feel as though they are roughing it out here on the Rim._

_In the architecture and hanging on the walls there is kitsch from a thousand worlds and ten thousand cultures stretching back perhaps as many years. This is called “authentic” by the youths here patronizing it. They will cite this place for authority in many haughty monologues in the coming years._

_The coming years will take much from them, most satisfyingly their youth. I know mine will remain for decades yet. But still I will work for them and their interests as I have and do for their parents. I will still drink considerably afterward, probably as their children and grandchildren dance and revel below. Nothing ever changes, least of all myself._

_As I look down from the balcony, I see her on the dance floor again. Her black hair is shimmering under the arcing neon lights and lasers and the mist. Her hair lifts with anti-rhythm to the rest of her body. Her dress is white but scatters the light around it as if casting rainbows in every direction. Her eyes are closed with concentration. Her smile is radiant. She dances with many others, but she is only with herself. Always she is happy and content in herself. Always she is complete. She is fey. She is perfect._

_I want her. I need her in my life, at least for tonight. She will solve everything else, at least for tonight.  
_

_I find myself fingering the gold chain on my neck. It is decided._

_I finish the rest of my double whiskey in a gulp. I leave my stool. My legs wobble with uncharacteristic indecisiveness. I count my straws again. They’ve gotten away from me, or else I am seeing double. Either way, I am doing well tonight. It has been a while._

_The spiral staircase is a challenge. My right hand never leaves the railing. I can leap ledge to ledge. I am an acrobat paramount. I am praeternatural in dexterity. I tell myself this while I hope each foot steady-finds the next stair step._

_My concentration on changing elevation has kept me from keeping track of her. As I approach the dance floor, she is no longer there. She is no longer dancing._

_She has disappeared. I am alone again, surrounded._

_I can feel my face contort with rage. It is unbecoming, so I suppress it. The years of Chozoan asceticism were not wasted._

_I push my way through the crowd toward the bar, ready to order. I order another double. I am not rude, but my shoulders do not suffer anything less than the utmost deference. Those who feel brave enough to swing their vision to meet mine quickly find something else more interesting to look at on the ceiling or the nearby stranger or their own feet._

_I am pleased, but my pleasure is never very potent weighed against other things. My drink tastes of bile. I feel my heart pump it, yellow and black.  
_

_That is all I remember until suddenly I am outside the establishment, and she is pulling me by bloody knuckles away from a crowd and three young fellows who are sprawled on the ground, achieving varying success at consciousness._

_She is telling me they are sons of important people. She is telling me I shouldn't have done that. She is telling me it was just their drunkenness that made them unmannered. I am telling her prosthetic teeth remind one to be well-mannered. I am laughing.  
_

_She loves me for it then. Later, she will hate me for the same thing._

_We get in the lorry. We go to her home together. No one else gets to see what we do together._

* * *

**One’s efforts to shape the occurring present are like with magma. Once the moment is past, it will be cold stone forever.**

**But memory of the occurrence is clay never sent to kiln. It can be made over again and again.**

**The beginnings of things are less well-recalled than their ends.**

**The mind retrieves the early things to examine then replace into memory. The rough edges are smoothed away in the handling. The more a thing is thought about, the less it resembles its self. It resembles more how one would like it to be.**

**Once gone, the event is only an illusion. Remembering is invention.**

**One must take great pains to experience reality as it truly was.**

* * *

We appear, one after another, before K-2L. We appear, each in our own ship, in a row spaced evenly through space and time. They are me, as I once was, in the ships I once piloted. We are together, each alone.

They are one light-year closer to the planet every time. They have come for the same thing as I. They have come as I did each year before. They have come to watch what will happen. They have come to watch what always happens. They have come to hope for anything else.

The sorry little planet hangs, surrounded by nothing. It is protected by nothing and no one. The stupid Human colony does not expect ever to be interrupted with notability or notoriety. All anyone there wants is to be left alone. All anyone ever wants is to be left alone. All anyone ever wants is to be happy.

This is not something anyone ever gets to ask for and have answered.

This is the lesson the past teaches but does not know itself.

* * *

_My first good-bye to her is recalled easily. It is recalled clearly._

_I stand at the entrance to her cramped dormitory, ready to leave. I have not yet left, however. I am behaving peculiarly. I do not know why I should care to remain with someone new till almost midday._

_She comes out of the bathroom. She is in “comfort mode.” Her clothing is loose-fitting and hides every contour. Her hair is the opposite, pulled back tightly. She will not be leaving the flat today at all. This is her right.  
_

_I finally bathed at her insistence but remain an outward mess. She has marveled at my invulnerability from the damaging powers of ethanol. Sobriety retook me shortly after we arrived at her home the night before. Without consistent new additions, I feel no harm. She has not my physiology._

_All her glamor from the night before is gone. That particular radiance is absent. A subtler one possesses her now. I recognize too late it possesses me as well. Her only jewelry is my gold necklace. I do not remember giving it to her, but I am glad that I have, in retrospect.  
_

_We had only just managed to exchange names before physically intertwining. Now Li Min convinces me to agree on a prime root and modular number. I am certain then I will never use it to contact her. We had a pleasant few hours together. She is attractive, but too young. She is clever, but naive. I will travel everywhere and likely die before some return. She will be at the academy years more yet. However pleasant and easy she is to talk to, I will not ever talk to her again._

_But she knows I am Samus Aran. I do not know why I told her._

_I never remember why I told her._

* * *

We are all here: all of me in my dozens here. It is time.

The illusion of serenity breaks. I see the first of the enemy arrive now. The Space Pirate ship hides on the far side of K-2L's largest moon as it warps into range. This is another sign of their cleverness. They never send a raiding party anywhere in force without scouting first. They never send a raiding party anywhere without making sure it is safe for them.

A pirate raider is not what one would call intelligent. Wisdom, conscience, and strategy are not attributes high command would burden any but the highest classes with. Still, all of them are clever. As it comes to pillage and slaughter, each hatches with epigenetic aptitude. This is their gift. This is their nature. All of the exo-biologists say so. I have sat for the lectures. I have heard the evidence.

I am convinced of their aptitude.

The first ship arrives completely into real space. It begins to speed around the moon. The first ship begins to speed around the planet itself now. It is very quick. It gets to the other side of K-2L. It starts back around. There are no defenses below. It has confirmed the earlier reports. The rest of the pirate raiding party begin to warp in, hidden behind the moon. They will not concern themselves with caution.

In moments, their first ships will land. Then they will move quickly. But they will not hurry. If one spots a bit of meat it expects to be tasty, they will not pass it by. They will savor and revel.

I know this because I have watched it many times.

I know this because I am there.

* * *

**Everything dies. Fecundity is an investment only in rot.**

**A jungle stinks with never-ceasing putrefaction. An ocean blooms with teeming trillion-trillions one day only to decay and make the same place a charnel house the next.**

**Life is the universe speeding along its own irreversible entropy. That is the lesson everything is trying to teach us.**

**At the end of time, there will be no going back. It is to our fortune that we will not then be capable of acknowledging the foolishness of our shared hallucinations.**

**Our hallucination is to mistake chaos’s increase as “progress.”**

**Our hallucination is consciousness.**

* * *

_Li sends me a message less than a week after our first coupling. I do not receive it for several weeks due to unforeseen professional complications. To my surprise, she only sends the one. If she had sent two, I would not have answered. I tell her so. I do not know when next I will be nearby, but memories of our short time together remain pleasant._

_Soon after, I also recommend a poorly organized grey-market bounty hunter database she might be able to get access to. I think it would help her with her intelligence studies, for deep background._

_Ultimately, it was me, then, who brought work in to our pleasure.  
_

_Our communications after are infrequent. Weeks or months pass without any communication, then a mutual flurry and another break. Never are any messages unwelcome._

_The next time I have cause to visit the academies, it will be more than a year since I have felt her touch. I give her a week and a half of notice. She responds the next day. She is obviously excited. She knows a Grondheimian restaurant near the docks. The only entrance is off of a side street, from the alley. The owner is an emigrant who brought her parents with her to the platform. They are the head chefs, day shift and night. In her electronic messages, Li tells me many things about the restaurant. It's one of the favorite out-of-the-way places for her friends and her to go. She goes on and on about its genuineness in every area. She is obviously excited.  
_

_"Have you ever been to Grondheim?" I ask her a week before I arrive._

_"No," she replies the same day._

_"Then how are you so sure the restaurant is representative of the cuisine and culture of Grondheim?" I send her two days later._

_The rest of the week finishes without a reply from Li. I finalize my schedule and let her know when exactly I will be getting into the docks. She acknowledges she received it, but that is all.  I begin to wonder if she will show up to see me._

_When finally I leave my ship to go to the prearranged location, there is a knot in my stomach I have not felt in some time. I remember her being unimpressed with my state of dress when we met so I am in my formal wear. It is gray and plain, but there is a Federal eagle over my heart. My hair is tied back. I look serious. I look clean. I do not think she will be there. I am sure she will not be there._

_She is there. She has her hair down, falling over her shoulders, but I see the necklace I left with her there. Her pants are calf-length, loose and tan. Her shirt is a minimalist design, long-sleeved red with white lettering on the chest: GFPC § 46.08 (a) (b).  
_

_" 'A person commits this offense if, while a vessel is involved in interstellar commerce a pirate attempts to interfere with its authorized progress to a destination,' I say while walking the rest of the distance to her. I lean in to hug her. She receives it._

_" 'An offense under this section is penalized by death,' " she replies to finish the statute._

_I am smiling. I cannot help myself. I had ranted about that the morning after the night we met. She had remembered._

_"Here," she says, without expression. She pulls a glance screen out of her back pocket and puts it in my chest for me to take. I do. She starts walking. I follow her with split concentration. The glance screen is projecting a detailed report of the history of cuisine in Grondheim, focusing on the southern continent's eastern coast from late antiquity to the present. The executive summary is 20 screen lengths._

_I follow her, not really reading the report but skimming it. _The full report is more than 5,000 page screens_ The author group is from a colonial university on the planet, but the annotations and commentary are Li's own. They are scattered about the length of the report in dense clusters. There is something obscene about her I had not realized previously. I am excited.  
_

_When we do get to the restaurant, it is as she had described. The kitchen is in full view of the bar. No table can fit more than six humanoids. There is more room for red crystals than seating. A line of people roughly Li's age stand near the door waiting to get in. I walk to the front of the line to pay the host for a retroactive reservation. The host says that for twice that, she can check whether one of the booth reservations has been canceled. Li and I will eat our dinner in the booth._

_"I am very impressed by this," I tell her after she finishes talking to the host and sits down. I set the glance screen aside. "What made you go through all of the trouble, though?"_

_"Your message made sound like you thought I was a naive child," Li says. "I wanted you to know that I know what I'm talking about."_

_"You should order food for us then," I say._

_On my side of the menu I select a few mixed drinks and a wine from the tabletop menu. She asks what I ordered and selects two for herself. They appear in the wall panel and I remove them. We toast to seeing new people again then we shoot the Carnicero Platform Special. She makes a face but holds it down. I take a sip from my second drink. She waits another two seconds before doing the same, chasing the taste in her mouth away with a few gulps._

_"You are something different," I say, gesturing at the drink she just took and the glance screen she handed me. "I will not promise to read all of this, you know."_

_"Yes. But you'll still know that_ I _have."_

_She has not smiled at me yet today. I sometimes have trouble reading faces without my exoskeleton. It is especially true now. The booth is quiet until there is a knock as the food arrives, brought by a server who quickly leaves again._

_She begins to eat and I follow her lead. When the first bite is in my mouth, I start to chuckle. I try to hold it in but fail._

_"What is it?" she asks. I think she sounds irritated._

_"Li, you are a brilliant young woman. I have enjoyed all of our time together and communication." I pause. I am trying to think of some nice way to tell her. "Li, this food is delicious. Whatever this is, it is a wonderful meal."_

_"It's called Immot'k, a traditional meal of the Hau Order-"_

_I laugh again. I cannot help myself._

_"No, this food is_ delicious _. There is nothing traditional about it. I have had the misfortune of staying on Gronheim for two weeks once. Their food is edible, strictly speaking. But one does not seek it out. The palette of residents of that planet is quite peculiar, to say nothing of the monks."_

_"Nothing I read about it mentioned anything like that."_

_"Gronheim is out in the sticks, almost Pirate territory. No one from the Central Planets or Middle Systems ever has cause to go out there. It tastes fine to the colonists there, or perhaps they enjoy a particular culinary masochism. Who would ever have cause to talk about it?"_

_She is angry now. I can tell. I cannot help myself._

_"Look." I open the booth's door and point. "Do you see the Human line cook? Did you notice when we came in how he was tasting everything? The chef is working, and may even be good enough to add some of her own seasoning. But she does not want to taste anything. She is not back home. She is making food for a different sort of people now."  
_

_I lean back in and we shut the door. Li is quiet. She is looking at my face, eyes darting back and forth. They stop._

_"Where did you stay?" she says. "On Grondheim. Which continent? Which coast?"_

_"The southern coast of the northern continent. Some days in the interior of the southern continent for work."_

_"So you don't really know, do you?" she says. "It may just be the food you had was awful in the area you visited. They're from the eastern portion of the southern continent. I asked them. This could be authentic regional cuisine."_

_I shrug._

_"You may be right. I do not know for certain. I do not care to. But I do know this is delicious, and I am quite happy you brought me here."_

_Her shoulders bunch up as if working up an argument, but finally she smiles. We go back to drinking and eating. She asks why I dressed up; I tell her I thought it would make her feel more comfortable. That is her answer to wearing the pants and Galactic Federation Penal Code shirt as well. We drink more. There are more arguments, but also more laughing. Time does not seem to pass in the booth at all. It is a place I like to remember.  
_

_When it is time to leave and pay, we begin to fight over the bill. I desire to pay for everything. I am an adult with an income. She says she is an adult with an inheritance._

_"I am stubborn," I say. "I will not budge on this."_

_"I'm just as stubborn as you," Li says. "I am your host here, and I'll pay for us."_

_"I am bigger and stronger than you are. I am meaner. If I insist on paying, they will listen to me before you."_

_"That's true," she says. "That's why I made sure they'd deduct from my Fisks before I sat down to join you."_

_Curses begin to exit my mouth like a waterfall before they bubble into another laugh. I love her for this right now. Later I will hate her for the same thing._

_"I will get you back for this," I say when we leave. My mind is on a particular prophecy. "I am mean, and my wrath is terrible."_

_"But I am clever," Li says. "Are you sure it wasn't my plan all along to get you riled up after dinner?"_

_There had been some talk earlier about taking a tour of the platform together. Instead we return to my rented room and do not leave for the next 32 hours.  
_

_We keep in better contact after that._

_Soon, the academies seemed not too far out of my way on more and more occasions. Serendipity meant I could transport her from her home in the Central Planets back to school, or vice versa._

_We were each determined to let the other know we harbored no serious intentions._

_“I still have all of the tests upcoming to graduate the data-analysis program. Then I have at least two years of military training and field work service, and assuming I maintain standards during all of that, I still have to be accepted and have a written recommendation to get into the clandestine services track,” Li said. “I don’t have time or the energy for a relationship. It wouldn’t be fair.”_

_It sounded fine logic and a plan at the time. I agreed whole-hearted for my own reasons._

_"You are very lovely to be with, but if you need to hear 'I love you,' you will need to find another's lips," I warned._

_But the years slip away and add together on their own. This is their subtle conspiracy._

* * *

Space Pirates reach the surface of K-2L and creep upon it. Those in the settlements know something unwanted is to happen. They do not yet know they will all die or how terrible it will be. Hope remains that it is not so dire as their fears insist. Hope remains in some other explanation. Hope remains in a Savior.

Unfortunately, Prophecy did not care to include them among the saved.

My eyes stay fixed, but I do not watch this. This is the worst part. This is the place I do not return to. I will not join the little girl on that planet for this. She will have to survive on her own strength, however improbable that is.

But she will. She and no one else.

The worst will not last long. Their hopes are snuffed out. Smoke billows up and wraps around the lower atmosphere. There is nothing more to see for hours except individual pirate ships leaving, then all remaining lift away in haste and are gone. There is nothing to see for days but that smoke, blowing in one direction then another with the wind. 

I nudge the ship forward, through the approaching light-days. Some of my recent past selves are arriving to watch as well. 

There was a time when I made myself experience this echo in full. I meditated on it. Recalling the hunger and thirst on the surface, I too neither ate nor drank. I let the heat and cold ravage me as it almost consumed me there. I remembered the stray dogs and their teeth in detail, and the scamper up small trees or on still-standing roofs. I have not the energy for such masochism any longer. In a million years, we will all be dead.

Above the smoking planet, the elegant Chozoan spacecraft shimmers into existence. I cannot see their probes, but I know they send them. Prophecy led them to look for a messiah here. Now they wonder, was there some mistake? Did they arrive too late?

But one of the probes finds the lifesigns of a Human child. She is too exhausted and weak to be frightened by the sight of the giant bird people. A wound on her thigh cut deep and much blood was lost. She needs medical care, but to have any hope, she needs a transfusion. The leader of the Chozo expedition is known as Old Bird. He offers his own. As is custom, he adopts as his own the Human girl who carries his blood in her. He will raise her and protect her, Old Bird says, and the Chozo will teach her all of their ways.

They wait until later to explain how serendipitous the Space Pirate raid was, coming when it did to burn up so much chaff. If not for it and the protective hand of destiny, their Savior might never have been found.

* * *

_Li says hello when I come through the door. She does not look up. I do not say hello to her._   
  
_She is on her couch, legs stretched and bare. A glance-screen is in one hand. The other holds a wine glass half-filled. She no longer imbibes liquor. She no longer gets drunk. She no longer dances. She still smiles, but not for me._

_She has been cutting her hair short for several years, but this night I see new lines on her face I did not notice before. This terrifies me._

_She no longer wears the necklace. I do not remember the last time I saw it. I never think to ask._

_This is our last night together as one. I do not realize that at the time. Later I realize that she had left me already, long before. I do not realize this is just the echo finishing._

_I see us there again, in memory. I have come to her flat. No. It is our flat. It has been for some years. I have bought almost half of everything in it. I keep my own house despite this, for the illusion is useful and necessary. I am my own independent person. She is likewise. This is the pretense that lets me continue as I had been before her, that I might remain myself._

_My dalliances away from her never ceased, even when hers puttered out. My assurances that my love was vast and she remained my favorite book to read failed to assure her._

_Love is not a bookshelf._

_We are very much done. That which delighted her about me before irritates her now. I am unchanged, but she is not. The arguments have grown more intense.The silences have stretched longer. We have ended some time before. It is only the echoes now._

_I do not know this at the time. If I do know, I care not to acknowledge it. The pretending still is nice and enjoyable to bask in. It continues to be, if I let the memory itself bubble up again, only._

_When finally she looks up from her screen, there is some reconciliation regarding some dispute. We had fought, and I had left without resolving it. I was wrong but will make no alterations in my choices. I apologize here, but for all the wrong things. She does not forgive me but can muster no more anger or concern. She cannot care enough about me even for spite. At the end, there is not even that._

_We sign the pact in flesh on her bed, and for the last time I taste myself on her lips. I understand it to be so, perhaps. But I say no good-byes. Instead I leave before she wakes and let the silence stretch long, into forever._

* * *

I came to mourn the dead, and I have failed. I miss her. My thoughts all lead back to her.

There has been no one else since her. There has been pleasure, surely, but no person to share mind with as well as body.

Her absence makes me more miserable than I remember her presence ever giving joy to me.

I never took her on this annual ritual of end and beginning. I thought it too private. She asked where I was going, and always I evaded. I realize now I ought to have brought her. But I did not. And never will. It is too late to amend the past. It does not change, no matter how often you watch it.

This is time and regret and how it treats you. This is living.

Everyone I knew from my birthplace's planet is dead. Everyone who rescued me from it as well. I am alone. She was the one who might have shared this with me. She is gone. There will not be another. 

I am going to die - someday. When I am dead, I will not be mourned. I will not be missed. I will be remembered. I will be in histories and songs. I am irreplaceable. I will not be mourned.

This does not trouble me. I think very little about it. When I do think about it, I remind myself that no wail ever was loud enough to wake the dead. To the grave, all is silence.  


This does not trouble me.

I am tired of my ritual.

I put in the coordinates for K-2L. This time I will finish my pilgrimage.

* * *

**Space Pirates are difficult to hate. One cannot hate them as might be appropriate a murderer or cannibal. As a race they are these things, though, it must be understood.**

**One must despise them as a weed, for that is how they grow and spread. A raid is not over when all of them are killed above ground. That is just the beginning. They lay eggs soon as they land. Depending on the breed, three or 13 or 19 years later, their progeny emerge from the ground and attack again.**

**By all appearances it is a raid, but it is not. Not from the sky have they fallen but out of the ground risen. When the colonists or Federation go on the pursuit, the tunnel system they find underground is immense. There is no end to them.**

**Once a raid lands, the pirate ships will likely never return, but clawed ravagers will erupt from the ground forever.**

**They are not pirates. They are not a species. They are a virus. They are a virus. They are a virus in search of a cure.**

**I will cure them.**

* * *

There is something perverse in each homeland step, but I make it anyway. For all I can remember of my first seven years, I was afraid so terribly of dying not 10 kilometers from my birth. I thought once I left, I would never return.

The end is at the beginning. 

I want to make my way to home-home. It has been so long. Everything has collapsed on itself. The wind and dust and time have stolen from the land, and time itself has stolen from memory what used to be.

But geolocators will not fail me entirely. I can get back to my father's land without much trouble. I can walk it.

There was much happiness here once. My parents once joined here to produce me. I am the echo of an orgasm long since forgotten.

K-2L has been too near the pirate activity in decades following the raid. Interstellar lanes have been cleared recently, but no one has come back here to make a new life of what colonists lost in their horror.

My home is a wasteland. In every direction, my parents’ generation is a wasteland. Nothing erected remains standing. There is no mine suspected of producing anything worth getting out if pirates might come again, from sky or ground.

There are no humans here. There is nothing here. Only failure. There is rot and there is rust and there is entropy.

This colony is the universe.

I change my visor to scan beneath the ground. For a moment, I forget where I am. I think I am back on Zebes. In every direction, there are tunnels. They crisscross one another. They link with expanded mineshafts and arteries. Pirates of every size and shape scurry within them. I identify fungal farm chambers, reservoir rooms, surface vents for cool and heat. I see no warrior class or non-anatomical weapons, but there are more pirates here than I thought possible.

The Galactic Federation still pays the bounty for Space Pirate trophies. It is rarely collected, but today I will do enough to make my spaceship groan from the weight of claws. What I cannot carry, I will leave in the dust, burning. Not one will escape me. They will learn firsthand what they taught me. They will find me a good student.

My visor follows a vent up to the surface behind a small grove of trees nearby. I remember my father had planted them less than a year before the raid, hoping they'd grow to lend shade for me and my children. It was to be a place of comfort away from anyone else. I understand him now. 

My audi system has picked up a noise. I listen to it and hear a _huh-huh-huh_ and an _-eech-eech-eech_.

I alter my visor filters until I see them, just beyond the trees, to the side of the small vent.

Two Space Pirates together are entwined. At first I think they are in some sort of fight. He standing behind she; she bent over, claws upon the ground. It is the mating stance. They stand in the shade.

 _Huh-huh-huh_.

 _Eech-eech-eech_.

My blood runs hot. It seems a mockery of defilement. The beam cannon continues to burn as I charge through the grove, tearing trees out of their roots but unhindered till I am standing in front of them in smoking vengeance. They appear to shriek. They uncouple. The male begins to run toward the vent, and my cannon tracks to him. The female moves in front of me, claws spread, not aggressive but chittering chittering chittering.

I leave my translator module to its work.

 _Kill him no, Big One_ , the female says. _He go. I stay. He go. End me. Have sorry. He go mother's nest. Please, Big One. Please. I stay, end. He go, live_.

She falls on her face, prostrate. My scan visor has been active, and looks her up and down and inside. I see she is already pregnant from a previous encounter. 

I should fry them inside of her. I should burn her reproductive system and leave her to run about infertile, wasting the seed of innumerable partners. Otherwise she will burst with another generation of vermin in not yet eight weeks. Then they too will grow up to spawn more vermin. And they. And they.

I speak instead.  

 _Is good, be young. Is good, have love_ , I say through my translator module. _End take all. Till end, be. Till end, have love_.

I let my cannon cool. I reach down to pick up one of the acorns still attached to a downed tree and place it in one of my suit's containers. Then I turn and leave. I walk away from the grove. I walk back into my ship. I lift off and return to space.

I will not come here again. This is not my home.

* * *

_I am in the dark place tonight. The little girl is with me and there is nothing to silence her with. She is a useless thing. She has no pleasant memories to contribute. She can manage nothing but helplessness and terror. She feels she is to blame for everything. I know she is right. It is all that miserable child’s fault. She remains and shrieks. I have no violence with which to chase her away._

_I give Li very little notice before I am at her off-campus door, pounding. She opens it anyway. Many chemicals soil my bloodstream. Many, but none suffice._

_She has company with her already, studying and drinking wine. I am unsure what to do. I cannot meet any of their eyes. I fear my face is still wet and red. The child is in me._

_Li calls me her friend to the others. She puts me to bed away from them. She says she will not be long. I ask her to turn on the light before she leaves. I hate the little girl for making me ask it._

_In remembrance, each moment is a fresh knife of hot shame. At the time, all I can manage is shivers beneath coverings._

_Later, Li returns and lies down next to me. She doesn’t ask what is the matter or if I need anything. She holds me. She strokes my hair. She tells me I am safe here. She tells me it is all right. Mostly she shushes softly and is near._

_When I stop shivering, I know the worst is passed. She knows it as well. Li needles me about my smell. She says she knew I was there before knocked. I laugh, again crying. She asks if I would like to take a shower. I nod and let her undress me._

_In reality, she is not strong enough to carry me. In effect she does. I stand. I follow her. I step into the shower as she does. Beyond that, I am catatonic. When the water comes on, she washes my hair and my back. She goes down to wash my feet and extremities, but if she is speaking, I cannot hear her over the reverberation of water inside my skull._

_I turn around. I bend to place my hand under her chin and kiss her on the mouth._

_“I love you,” I say._

_I let her say nothing. I kiss her again. I kiss her again._

_“I love you.” I kiss her. “I need you.” I kiss her. “You make me happy. I love you. I love you. I love you.”_

_Later in bed, we are together panting. She lays her head on my chest. I can smell her hair in my face. My breathing is rhythmic and she imagines me asleep, no doubt, as she whispers, “I love you, too.”_

_I am not afraid anymore._


End file.
